Secret documents reveal rules allowing NSA warrantless use of US data

New documents have been leaked shining further light on the top-secret surveillance programs operated by the NSA. According to The Guardian, the National Security Agency can retain and use information obtained through domestic communications.

According to two documents published in full by the newspaper on
Thursday, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has
approved a handful of policies that allow the National Security
Agency to make use of intelligence on United States persons.

President Barack Obama and his administration’s top intelligence
chiefs have previously denied the NSA targets American citizens
in the wake of classified documents leaked earlier this month.

The two new documents — including one-marked “top-secret” — were
both authorized by Attorney General Eric Holder on July 29, 2009,
and were leaked two weeks-to-the-day since The Guardian first
began publishing NSA papers attributed to former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden. Earlier this month, the American Civil
Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Holder and other Obama
administration officials for a number of constitutional rights
they alleged to have been violated under the surveillance
practices previously disclosed by the newspaper.

The new documents, The Guardian reports, details how the NSA can:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons
for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic
communications if they contain usable intelligence, information
on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are
encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to
cybersecurity;

• Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based
machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are
located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further
surveillance.

These powers vested in the NSA come notwithstanding other
provisions included in the documents that discuss safeguards that
are meant to be employed in order to avoid targeting US persons.

“The top-secret documents published today detail the
circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the
foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps
analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US and
reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens
and residents from data collection,” Glenn Greenwald and
James Ball write for The Guardian.

The reporters go on to quote from a FISA document they claim to
have seen that shows that the secretive intelligence court can
compel companies to give the government private data pertaining
to US citizens without offering any explanation.

Instead, they write, a FISA judge “declares that the
procedures submitted by the attorney general on behalf of the NSA
are consistent with US law and the Fourth Amendment.”

Under the FISA Act, the government can warrantlessly eavesdrop on
phone and Internet conversations if one of the parties involved
is reasonably sought to be outside of the United States. And
while the Obama administration insists that surveillance programs
authorized by FISA do not target US persons, the latest leak
shows that the government can still collect, retain and analyze
seized intelligence of Americans even when it’s clear that they
are within the country.

"In the absence of specific information regarding whether a
target is a United States person," it states "a person
reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or
whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United
States person unless such person can be positively identified as
a United States person."

“If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the
US,” The Guardian reports, “analysts are permitted to look
at the content of messages, or listen to phone calls, to
establish if this is indeed the case.”